2023 UnCommon Heroes
Saturday, October 21 | 1:00 pm PST | Oakland, CA
Each year, UnCommon Heroes presents a special opportunity for our growing community to come together and say "welcome home" to former clients, loved ones, and others who have recently returned home from prison. It also provides us with a platform to celebrate folks in our community doing the hard, often unrecognized work of making these reunions outside prison walls possible.
This year’s UnCommon Hero Awardees
Colby Lenz is an organizer and legal advocate with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and the Deputy Director of Policy and Community Research at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women. They have been working with people imprisoned in California women’s prisons for 20 years, including survival and release support, building leadership power with currently and formerly imprisoned people, and developing community-based responses to violence that do not rely on or reinforce the prison-industrial complex. Colby also organizes with Survived and Punished, a national organizing project to end the criminalization of survivors of sexual and domestic violence, as well as the Transgender Advocacy Group.
Check out our video to see what Colby’s friends and colleagues had to say about them!
James “JC” Cavitt is a former UnCommon Law client who has dedicated his post-incarceration career to addressing educational disparities and inequalities among people directly impacted by mass incarceration. He is the Program Director at California State University Fullerton, Project Rebound, a program that supports the higher education and successful reintegration of formerly incarcerated individuals. Much of JC’s career has been dedicated to changing the narrative about incarcerated individuals (check out his TED Talk with John Legend!), and providing pathways for formerly incarcerated students to gain access into institutions of higher education. In addition to his work at Project Rebound, JC is also a trained therapist, and provides therapy to current UnCommon Law clients as well as trauma training for our team and others. He was a consultant on UnCommon Law’s Home After Harm curriculum, and is heavily featured in the program’s video series.
Check out our video to see what JC’s friends and colleagues had to say about him!
Saturday, October 21st, 1:00 pm PST | The Overlook at Port Workspaces | Oakland, CA
Thank you to our sponsors!
Baker McKenzie, LLC
Rob & Olga Eber
The Norman Family
The Cole Family
Erin Scott
Lindsay Palaima Hazen
ACLU NorCal
JK Irwin Foundation
Nia Impact Capitol
Heising Simons Foundation
Alan Ramo & Leslie Rose
Justine Juson & Travis Pacoe
New Breath Foundation
Kazan McClain Partners’ Foundation
Rosen, Bien, Galvan & Grunfeld
Schmidt Family Foundation/11th Hour
Timothy & Diana Fitzpatrick
The Marfo Family
The Scott Family
Bonafide
The Veen Firm
Michael Bien and Jane Kahn Philanthropic Fund